Re: [Sugar-devel] Progress with SoaS boot-helper
On Thu, May 28, 2009 at 21:23, Luke Faraone l...@faraone.cc wrote: 2009/5/28 Caroline Meeks solutiongr...@gmail.com On Thu, May 28, 2009 at 5:28 AM, Tomeu Vizoso to...@sugarlabs.org wrote: Hi Luke, can you point us to a link where we can learn more about what you are trying to accomplish? I think this is Ticket 598 to support the Gardner Pilot. the use case is here: http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Gardner_Pilot_Academy#Critical_Path_Technical_Issues Yes, that's an accurate description of the goals for this project. An installable boot helper would provide functionality not avaliable in a normal boot-helper ISO, namely increasing boot time (time between a student inserting a SoaS stick and getting up and running) in addition to less down-time in between switches (as the machine would be able switch to another user/SoaS stick without rebooting). It would also be trivial to enable features such as on-server backups, live SoaS upgrades and repairs, and centralized administration by the IT staff. The boot-helper is related to a new installer method for this reason: our current method of formatting and installing SoaS on USB sticks cannot be read by the boot-helper. LVM snapshots are difficult to read outside of the context (in this case the kernel used in SoaS) in which they were created. Therefore, I suggested that we simply have raw EXT3/whatever on the flash drive, and mount them directly rather than using LVM. Sounds very good, do we have a timeframe already for testing the first results from this project? Regards, Tomeu -- Luke Faraone http://luke.faraone.cc ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
Re: [Sugar-devel] Progress with SoaS boot-helper
On a related subject, I am also actively researching Mac USB boot methods. A few weeks ago an Ubuntu developer posted (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=995704page=77) a fat .EFI boot file compatible with both 32-bit and 64-bit Intel Macs. Ubuntu has a useful matrix of compatible Macs at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MactelSupportTeam/CommunityHelpPages#Determine%20your%20model%20and%20hardware%20revision There are other possibilities too, such as: http://www.puredarwin.org/developers/booting/efiboot And, GRUB info for booting Linux on Mac: http://grub.enbug.org/TestingOnEFI also http://grub.enbug.org/TestingOnMacbook To my mind, it's worth investigating these solutions (based on a clickable icon OSX bash script on the SoaS USB stick, containing the bless command but requiring admin rights) since the result will be very easy to use and won't touch the hard disk. Sean On Fri, May 29, 2009 at 4:49 PM, Tomeu Vizoso to...@sugarlabs.org wrote: On Thu, May 28, 2009 at 21:23, Luke Faraone l...@faraone.cc wrote: 2009/5/28 Caroline Meeks solutiongr...@gmail.com On Thu, May 28, 2009 at 5:28 AM, Tomeu Vizoso to...@sugarlabs.org wrote: Hi Luke, can you point us to a link where we can learn more about what you are trying to accomplish? I think this is Ticket 598 to support the Gardner Pilot. the use case is here: http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Gardner_Pilot_Academy#Critical_Path_Technical_Issues Yes, that's an accurate description of the goals for this project. An installable boot helper would provide functionality not avaliable in a normal boot-helper ISO, namely increasing boot time (time between a student inserting a SoaS stick and getting up and running) in addition to less down-time in between switches (as the machine would be able switch to another user/SoaS stick without rebooting). It would also be trivial to enable features such as on-server backups, live SoaS upgrades and repairs, and centralized administration by the IT staff. The boot-helper is related to a new installer method for this reason: our current method of formatting and installing SoaS on USB sticks cannot be read by the boot-helper. LVM snapshots are difficult to read outside of the context (in this case the kernel used in SoaS) in which they were created. Therefore, I suggested that we simply have raw EXT3/whatever on the flash drive, and mount them directly rather than using LVM. Sounds very good, do we have a timeframe already for testing the first results from this project? Regards, Tomeu -- Luke Faraone http://luke.faraone.cc ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
Re: [Sugar-devel] Progress with SoaS boot-helper
Last time I tried, GRUB on EFI could not initialise hardware accelerated video drivers (my nvidia driver). GRUB on emulated BIOS worked, though. I just got my laptop back, I should be able to test this as well. 2009/5/29 Sean DALY sdaly...@gmail.com: On a related subject, I am also actively researching Mac USB boot methods. A few weeks ago an Ubuntu developer posted (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=995704page=77) a fat .EFI boot file compatible with both 32-bit and 64-bit Intel Macs. Ubuntu has a useful matrix of compatible Macs at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MactelSupportTeam/CommunityHelpPages#Determine%20your%20model%20and%20hardware%20revision There are other possibilities too, such as: http://www.puredarwin.org/developers/booting/efiboot And, GRUB info for booting Linux on Mac: http://grub.enbug.org/TestingOnEFI also http://grub.enbug.org/TestingOnMacbook To my mind, it's worth investigating these solutions (based on a clickable icon OSX bash script on the SoaS USB stick, containing the bless command but requiring admin rights) since the result will be very easy to use and won't touch the hard disk. Sean On Fri, May 29, 2009 at 4:49 PM, Tomeu Vizoso to...@sugarlabs.org wrote: On Thu, May 28, 2009 at 21:23, Luke Faraone l...@faraone.cc wrote: 2009/5/28 Caroline Meeks solutiongr...@gmail.com On Thu, May 28, 2009 at 5:28 AM, Tomeu Vizoso to...@sugarlabs.org wrote: Hi Luke, can you point us to a link where we can learn more about what you are trying to accomplish? I think this is Ticket 598 to support the Gardner Pilot. the use case is here: http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Gardner_Pilot_Academy#Critical_Path_Technical_Issues Yes, that's an accurate description of the goals for this project. An installable boot helper would provide functionality not avaliable in a normal boot-helper ISO, namely increasing boot time (time between a student inserting a SoaS stick and getting up and running) in addition to less down-time in between switches (as the machine would be able switch to another user/SoaS stick without rebooting). It would also be trivial to enable features such as on-server backups, live SoaS upgrades and repairs, and centralized administration by the IT staff. The boot-helper is related to a new installer method for this reason: our current method of formatting and installing SoaS on USB sticks cannot be read by the boot-helper. LVM snapshots are difficult to read outside of the context (in this case the kernel used in SoaS) in which they were created. Therefore, I suggested that we simply have raw EXT3/whatever on the flash drive, and mount them directly rather than using LVM. Sounds very good, do we have a timeframe already for testing the first results from this project? Regards, Tomeu -- Luke Faraone http://luke.faraone.cc ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
Re: [Sugar-devel] Progress with SoaS boot-helper
I think one of those links discusses a switch to disable graphics acceleration. Sean On Fri, May 29, 2009 at 5:24 PM, Lucian Branescu lucian.brane...@gmail.com wrote: Last time I tried, GRUB on EFI could not initialise hardware accelerated video drivers (my nvidia driver). GRUB on emulated BIOS worked, though. I just got my laptop back, I should be able to test this as well. 2009/5/29 Sean DALY sdaly...@gmail.com: On a related subject, I am also actively researching Mac USB boot methods. A few weeks ago an Ubuntu developer posted (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=995704page=77) a fat .EFI boot file compatible with both 32-bit and 64-bit Intel Macs. Ubuntu has a useful matrix of compatible Macs at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MactelSupportTeam/CommunityHelpPages#Determine%20your%20model%20and%20hardware%20revision There are other possibilities too, such as: http://www.puredarwin.org/developers/booting/efiboot And, GRUB info for booting Linux on Mac: http://grub.enbug.org/TestingOnEFI also http://grub.enbug.org/TestingOnMacbook To my mind, it's worth investigating these solutions (based on a clickable icon OSX bash script on the SoaS USB stick, containing the bless command but requiring admin rights) since the result will be very easy to use and won't touch the hard disk. Sean On Fri, May 29, 2009 at 4:49 PM, Tomeu Vizoso to...@sugarlabs.org wrote: On Thu, May 28, 2009 at 21:23, Luke Faraone l...@faraone.cc wrote: 2009/5/28 Caroline Meeks solutiongr...@gmail.com On Thu, May 28, 2009 at 5:28 AM, Tomeu Vizoso to...@sugarlabs.org wrote: Hi Luke, can you point us to a link where we can learn more about what you are trying to accomplish? I think this is Ticket 598 to support the Gardner Pilot. the use case is here: http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Gardner_Pilot_Academy#Critical_Path_Technical_Issues Yes, that's an accurate description of the goals for this project. An installable boot helper would provide functionality not avaliable in a normal boot-helper ISO, namely increasing boot time (time between a student inserting a SoaS stick and getting up and running) in addition to less down-time in between switches (as the machine would be able switch to another user/SoaS stick without rebooting). It would also be trivial to enable features such as on-server backups, live SoaS upgrades and repairs, and centralized administration by the IT staff. The boot-helper is related to a new installer method for this reason: our current method of formatting and installing SoaS on USB sticks cannot be read by the boot-helper. LVM snapshots are difficult to read outside of the context (in this case the kernel used in SoaS) in which they were created. Therefore, I suggested that we simply have raw EXT3/whatever on the flash drive, and mount them directly rather than using LVM. Sounds very good, do we have a timeframe already for testing the first results from this project? Regards, Tomeu -- Luke Faraone http://luke.faraone.cc ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
Re: [Sugar-devel] Progress with SoaS boot-helper
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: RIPEMD160 On Fri, May 29, 2009 at 05:47:05PM +0200, Sean DALY wrote: I think one of those links discusses a switch to disable graphics acceleration. Yeah, the URL I provided earlier in this thread deals with that issue. Not sure anyone found my URL relevant, however. - Jonas - -- * Jonas Smedegaard - idealist og Internet-arkitekt * Tlf.: +45 40843136 Website: http://dr.jones.dk/ [x] quote me freely [ ] ask before reusing [ ] keep private -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (GNU/Linux) iEYEAREDAAYFAkogCJcACgkQn7DbMsAkQLieCwCeKLRS48X+XT3naTV8BNYNR4gg f5YAnR8cpVxhRQmVg1bm5stOQ7q89dGC =5jZD -END PGP SIGNATURE- ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
Re: [Sugar-devel] Progress with SoaS boot-helper
On Fri, May 29, 2009 at 10:49, Tomeu Vizoso to...@sugarlabs.org wrote: Sounds very good, do we have a timeframe already for testing the first results from this project? Nothing definite as of yet. It's starting to look like it won't be ready for our F11/SoaS v1 release, with an alpha coming out some time around the 14th of June. -- Luke Faraone http://luke.faraone.cc ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
Re: [Sugar-devel] Progress with SoaS boot-helper
On Fri, May 29, 2009 at 13:18, Caroline Meeks carol...@solutiongrove.comwrote: Please file a ticket for this work so I can track and reference it in the wiki and communications and such. Will do. Technical Question: Will this effect the code that is SoaS2 or is this going to be a new USB creation tool that takes the same code and puts it on the USB in a different way? It would be the latter; this does not in any way change the *image *creation process, and if it does not work in time it can be dropped without any other effects. It is simply a different way of writing an image to a disk. The boot-helper component would be an application that would be on the hard disk of the workstations, and would only work with sticks created in the above method. -- Luke Faraone http://luke.faraone.cc ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
Re: [Sugar-devel] Progress with SoaS boot-helper
On Tue, May 26, 2009 at 16:49, Luke Faraone l...@faraone.cc wrote: Hi all, This is turning into a larger project than I'd originally imagined. Since the current process of using LVM loop-mounted partitions prevents us from mounting the SoaS filesystem outside of SoaS itself, we had to come up with a new method of installing SoaS that *can* be read by a running OS. I've done some work on modifying Canonical's Live USB creator to support this, but it will take some time. Hi Luke, can you point us to a link where we can learn more about what you are trying to accomplish? Thanks, Tomeu We've decided to set up the partitions on devices as descried on the wiki (permalink). This has the additional benefit of additional stability (loop-mounted filesystems are inherently more fragile), as well as (hopefully) increased compatability with older and odder BIOSes that only support USB-ZIP booting, rather than the more modern USB-HDD. There should be a decently stable version of the USB creator with these changes around by mid to late June, however it might need to be pushed back until the next SoaS release. There is little to no risk with implementing it late in the SoaS release schedule, if it was to be ready before then, since it is currently a non-essential component; there exist many other ways to create a SoaS stick, and the creator would be able to work with existing SoaS images without a problem. -- Luke Faraone http://luke.faraone.cc ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
Re: [Sugar-devel] Progress with SoaS boot-helper
On Thu, May 28, 2009 at 5:28 AM, Tomeu Vizoso to...@sugarlabs.org wrote: On Tue, May 26, 2009 at 16:49, Luke Faraone l...@faraone.cc wrote: Hi all, This is turning into a larger project than I'd originally imagined. Since the current process of using LVM loop-mounted partitions prevents us from mounting the SoaS filesystem outside of SoaS itself, we had to come up with a new method of installing SoaS that *can* be read by a running OS. I've done some work on modifying Canonical's Live USB creator to support this, but it will take some time. Hi Luke, can you point us to a link where we can learn more about what you are trying to accomplish? I think this is Ticket 598 to support the Gardner Pilot. the use case is here: http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Gardner_Pilot_Academy#Critical_Path_Technical_Issues Let me know if I'm wrong about this! Thanks, Caroline Thanks, Tomeu We've decided to set up the partitions on devices as descried on the wiki (permalink). This has the additional benefit of additional stability (loop-mounted filesystems are inherently more fragile), as well as (hopefully) increased compatability with older and odder BIOSes that only support USB-ZIP booting, rather than the more modern USB-HDD. There should be a decently stable version of the USB creator with these changes around by mid to late June, however it might need to be pushed back until the next SoaS release. There is little to no risk with implementing it late in the SoaS release schedule, if it was to be ready before then, since it is currently a non-essential component; there exist many other ways to create a SoaS stick, and the creator would be able to work with existing SoaS images without a problem. -- Luke Faraone http://luke.faraone.cc ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel -- Caroline Meeks Solution Grove carol...@solutiongrove.com 617-500-3488 - Office 505-213-3268 - Fax ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
Re: [Sugar-devel] Progress with SoaS boot-helper
2009/5/28 Caroline Meeks solutiongr...@gmail.com On Thu, May 28, 2009 at 5:28 AM, Tomeu Vizoso to...@sugarlabs.org wrote: Hi Luke, can you point us to a link where we can learn more about what you are trying to accomplish? I think this is Ticket 598 to support the Gardner Pilot. the use case is here: http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Gardner_Pilot_Academy#Critical_Path_Technical_Issues Yes, that's an accurate description of the goals for this project. An installable boot helper would provide functionality not avaliable in a normal boot-helper ISO, namely increasing boot time (time between a student inserting a SoaS stick and getting up and running) in addition to less down-time in between switches (as the machine would be able switch to another user/SoaS stick without rebooting). It would also be trivial to enable features such as on-server backups, live SoaS upgrades and repairs, and centralized administration by the IT staff. The boot-helper is related to a new installer method for this reason: our current method of formatting and installing SoaS on USB sticks cannot be read by the boot-helper. LVM snapshots are difficult to read outside of the context (in this case the kernel used in SoaS) in which they were created. Therefore, I suggested that we simply have raw EXT3/whatever on the flash drive, and mount them directly rather than using LVM. -- Luke Faraone http://luke.faraone.cc ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
[Sugar-devel] Progress with SoaS boot-helper
Hi all, This is turning into a larger project than I'd originally imagined. Since the current process of using LVM loop-mounted partitions prevents us from mounting the SoaS filesystem outside of SoaS itself, we had to come up with a new method of installing SoaS that *can* be read by a running OS. I've done some work on modifying Canonical's Live USB creator to support this, but it will take some time. We've decided to set up the partitions on devices as descried on the wikiat%20http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_on_a_Stick/USB_format( permalinkhttp://wiki.sugarlabs.org/index.php?title=Sugar_on_a_Stick/USB_formatoldid=29087). This has the additional benefit of additional stability (loop-mounted filesystems are inherently more fragile), as well as (hopefully) increased compatability with older and odder BIOSes that only support USB-ZIP booting, rather than the more modern USB-HDD. There should be a decently stable version of the USB creator with these changes around by mid to late June, however it might need to be pushed back until the next SoaS release. There is little to no risk with implementing it late in the SoaS release schedule, if it was to be ready before then, since it is currently a non-essential component; there exist many other ways to create a SoaS stick, and the creator would be able to work with existing SoaS images without a problem. -- Luke Faraone http://luke.faraone.cc ___ Sugar-devel mailing list Sugar-devel@lists.sugarlabs.org http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
